Friday, September 14, 2012

It's a Loma Linda week. My last
appointment at the Implant Clinic at the School of Dentistry was
comprised of a long photo session. My mouth was pried open with
metal hooks and it seems like every one of my teeth was photographed
from several different angles. Then I got to pose full face,
smiling, pouting and baring my teeth for several dozen pictures.
Anna, my lovely Spanish dentist is sensitive to my vanity and
apologized for needing to take a number of photographs of me without
my fake plastic front tooth. The Mammy Yokum series. This week each
of my teeth is analyzed for gum recession and how profusely each
tooth bleeds when poked with a sharp instrument. The patient in the
next room blathers on in detail about his dental history including
where each service was performed and what it cost. “That molar was
crowned in Honolulu in 1973. It cost $600.00. Then in 1994 I had to
have it done again in Tucson. That ran me almost a grand.” He
attempts fruitlessly to explain to his dentist the meaning of the
expression “third time's a charm.” My own dentist is quick on the
uptake when I introduce her to the English expression “windbag.”
“It's a good match,” she says. “That dentist is from Taiwan
and he barely knows a word of English.” Other than dissing her
colleagues and their patients, we talk about food, as I do also with
Nick, my regular dentist. Anna, in fact is a hardcore foodie, having
driven to Las Vegas and back in a single evening for what she reports
was an outstanding dinner. Nick is very eager for Anna to call him.
Not to discuss my treatment plan but so she can tell him the name of
the restaurant.

I schedule some extractions for the end
of the month. I will be unable to wear my fake front tooth for a
couple of days so I will be hiding out at a motel in Redlands with
Joe College ministering to me. Anna also drops the bomb that after
the actual implants are placed I will be unable to wear fake tooth
for at least two weeks. Seeing that I am starting to blubber she
promises to try to figure out some sort of fake apparatus that won't
interfere with the implants. If that fails I'm considering going
Muslim for a couple of weeks.

Dismissed from the dental school I text
Joe College to warn him that I'm on my way to campus. I arrive to
find his room spotless. Last year's roommate's mom sent a maid down
from Pasadena every week but apparently the boy is now managing on
his own. The dorm itself is incredibly funky, built in the 1920s and
last renovated in the 1970s but there's a good vibe. Most of the kids
keep their doors open and wander amiably in and out of each others
rooms.

The boy chooses a Thai restaurant
that's not particularly good but it's the designated establishment
for taking parents. We had an up and down summer due chiefly to the
boy's under-occupation. Now however something about being with him,
on what is now his turf, improves the quality of our interaction. We
are far from the scene of his childhood and free of this baggage
there is a pleasant ease between us. My soon to be 20 year old son
is an adult, albeit a young adult. I feel no compulsion to parent
him and can sit back and just enjoy who he is.

Joe College takes me to place that
makes ice cream on the spot using liquid nitrogen. Redlands, utterly
instant mashed potatoes, canned gravy and Republican during my tenure
there, now has little pockets of hipness. Lest I think it's San
Francisco, the boy takes me to the largest thrift store I have ever
seen. It's the size of several football fields and well organized.
We are both thrift store aficionados but the huge array of
merchandise is sad and charmless. The cavernous store evokes the
Redlands of my college years and also the essence of the true
Redlands, despite the liquid nitrogen, as it is now. There are still
blocks of lovely Victorian and 1930s Spanish houses but the orange
groves of my own college years have been bulldozed and replaced by
acres of identical stucco homes, many now in foreclosure. The boy
keeps his eye on the clock. I drop him back on campus and he trots
off on time for his afternoon class with my leftover ice cream.

The next night Himself is working.
Spuds has a hard schedule and I think he needs a little midweek
treat, my rationale for being too lazy to cook dinner. I read on
Yelp about a Georgian restaurant in Glendale and we both study the
menu online and decide to give it a shot. It's in a strip mall but
there's a colorful paint job and lots of folk-art. The only other
party is a group of middle aged men who get up between courses to go
outside to smoke in the parking lot. The place is run by two middle
aged men and a young waitress all of whom are either using their
cellphones or smoking in the parking lot when not directly involved
in serving food. The waitress teeters on impossibly high heels. She
hands us the menus and asks if I speak Russian. “No.”
“Armenian?” “No.” She looks annoyed. “Is that OK?” I
ask. “Yes. OK,” she says without much conviction. “To drink?”
“Diet soda?” “No.” “OK, just water then.” Spuds asks,
“Coke?” and she shakes her head. One of the men seems to have a
slightly better command of English so I verify with him that there is
absolutely no soda. I think about explaining that soda has a huge
profit margin. I also think about offering to teach them English. I
think a lot of stuff but I've learned to keep my mouth shut.

The food is actually delicious although
Spuds gets his entree about twenty minutes before I get mine and he
gets my rice and I get his french fries. We are given some
complimentary potato salad which I command Spuds not to let me eat
much of so he polishes it off dutifully. Spuds notes that the menu
is written in flawless English so we think maybe that there are
English speaking employees on duty for the more busy weekends. The
waitress is flummoxed when I attempt to pay in cash and I can see
through the window to the kitchen that there is high tension with
regard to making change. Some would probably have found the whole
experience crazy making but Spuds and I aren't in a hurry. The
enjoyment of the food for us is actually enhanced by the
authenticity. Five miles from home but it feels like we've spent an
hour in Georgia except for there I imagine people can smoke inside
restaurants. So it's kind of the best of both worlds.

I elevate myself from empty nest morass
with the realization that my time with the kids will improve in
quality as it diminishes in quantity. My other epiphany as a new
Jewish year begins is that after six years of writing here
religiously it is time to redirect my energies. I love this format
and can't imagine abandoning it all together but I'm going to reduce
my postings here to once a month. I've proven to myself that I have
the self discipline required of a productive writer. The blog is a
fantastic format for me because I can sort stuff out. I'm able to
weave together disparate ideas into weird sense. Now it's time for
the final purge necessary to complete a full length manuscript that's
been dogging me for nearly two years. Then I hope to use what I've
honed by blogging to take on some more focused non-fiction essays.
Plus I have a couple short stories outlined. And of course there's
the novel which I'd better get started on while I can still form
cogent thoughts.

It always surprises and delights me to
tell someone something and get the response “I know. I read your
blog.” It's those folks who read weekly, or even once in a while,
who make me feel becoming a real writer is within my reach. Next
year at Rosh Hashanah Spuds will be away at college. I hope by the
time he goes my immersion in writing will fill some of the gaps left
by my transition out of the hands-on mom phase of my life. I can't
imagine ever not missing the kids but I will always be buoyed by
knowing how much fun it is to be with them now that they require less
full throttle mothering. It's time to really write now that I can't
use the kids' neediness as an excuse not to.

It is strange to think about not
posting here every Friday and returning home eager to read Himself's
response. Often people intimate that they enjoy Himself's comments
more than the blog itself. “It's so obvious how much he loves
you,” they say. In a time of transition this brings me back to
what is constant and solid. The house will be quiet and I might
become so frustrated by a spate of rejection letters that I retreat
to re-runs of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. I have let myself down so
many times and even after posting at least 1000 words every week for
over six years I still don't entirely trust myself to persevere.
But even if my grand writer's life I envision doesn't come to
fruition, I am loved obviously.

Look for the first of my now monthly
posts the first week of October. May you be inscribed upon the book
of life for a good year.

Friday, September 7, 2012

After more than twenty years of
marriage Himself and I have a list of subjects we know better than to
talk about. I usually don't broach these topics here at Casamurphy
either. Knowing the political predilections of most of the mutual
friends who read this, I protect Himself from their censure. However,
because it is a good illustration of our half empty/half full
dichotomy, I will provide a single example. I am watching a program
about the ease with which automatic weapons can be purchased from
unlicensed dealers at gun shows and the attenuate carnage that
results when these guns are smuggled into Mexico. Himself has
sequestered himself in his office during the recent heatwave. It is
the coolest room in the house and as it is the end of his teaching
quarter he has legitimate reason to hole up there. I guess a
squabble is better than no attention at all so when he comes up for a
snack, anticipating the response, I posit, “You don't really give a
rat's ass about gun control, do you?”

I get the answer I expect. The culture
is just too far gone. It won't make a difference. Outlawing weapons
will just lead to a greater black market and probably even exacerbate
the violence. I relent that this may be the short term result. But,
I add that, despite the immediate consequences, at least giving lip
service to getting automatic weapons out of distribution might serve
to shape a vision for future generations. European countries with
strict gun control laws experience far less violence than we do in
the U.S. It's not like they don't have their own blood soaked
histories, but a conscious decision was made to change the mindset a
generation ago and it worked. He shrugs, finishes a tangerine and
skulks back to the basement. He knows that his pessimism keeps me on
my toes and that he'd actually hate it if my outlook were as dark as
his own.

Bored, with the kids at the FYF
festival and Himself sequestered in his office, I accompany a friend
to see Robot and Frank Coincidentally, this film, as well as two
novels I'm reading, “Arcadia” by Lauren Groff and “True
Believers” by Kurt Anderson are all set in the not very distant
future. All three works are too character driven fall into the
category of speculative fiction but there are hints about what the
world might be like a few years down the pike. In Arcadia, a
character stricken with ALS uses a device that can simulate speech
based on the movement of her eyes. In Robot and Frank, a robot
replaces a home health care assistant. Both of these technologies
are actually in development now and these fictions suggest how life
improving these and other technological advances will likely become.

The two novels and the film also
suggest that our dependence on technology will compromise the quality
of human interaction. Himself would be all over this. Plus throw in
invasion of privacy, identity theft and cyber-warfare. As stoked as
I am about the promise of the new I admit I'm sometimes disturbed to
find myself forgetting that Siri is not a real person. And when I
ask her to find a nearby Von's Market the stupid bitch keeps trying
to direct me to a bail bondsman.

My dad caressed his infant grandson's
head and whispered, “I wonder what you will see in your lifetime.”
The kids are totally nonplussed by advances in technology. My boys
don't want to hear about black and white TVs and only seven channels.
They mistakenly read a subtext of criticism, and complaint about how
much easier they have it, into my awe at the modern world. In truth,
I don't think they really have it that much easier. The economy was
more stable when I was their age. Himself and I both applied to a
single college to which we were accepted and subsequently attended.
Now the stakes seem way higher and the process requires spread sheets
and professional intervention. Our college educations pretty much
guaranteed us work of some sort. My kids' educations insure them
nothing but debt.

When there was nothing I liked on TV, I
was too lazy to go outside and didn't have anything I felt like
reading I was, for better or worse, alone with my thoughts. I
complained about being bored all the time. My cousin and I had an
exchange that was so frequent it became a comedy routine. “Whaddaya
wanna do?” “I dunno. Whaddaya wanna do?” With so much
stimulation available on immediate demand I don't remember either of
my kids ever whining about boredom. They do have social interactions
but don't have to aggressively seek them out because they connect via
social media and have infinite entertainment options. Are they ever,
I wonder, just lost in their own thoughts?

Given the polarity of their folks, my
kids are coming up in the best of times and the worst of times. I
think that ultimately technology will make the world a better place.
Himself sees Armageddon around every corner. Like my dad, I wonder
what the kids will see in their lifetimes. I worry for them. We both
do. But our divided partnership is united in our sureness that no
matter what, our kids are good. This fills us both with optimism. I
drive down Cypress Avenue and need to cut over to San Fernando before
it turns into Eagle Rock Blvd. There are two streets where it is
easy to turn. One is Division and the other is Future. Division is
a little quicker but I always choose Future.